<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Disjointed by veryvincible</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092710">Disjointed</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryvincible/pseuds/veryvincible'>veryvincible</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Body Horror, Gen, Hallucinations, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Murder! a little bit, Panic Attacks, Psychological Horror, Someone gets a little bit murdered, Suicidal Ideation (mention), Unreliable Narrator</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:22:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,605</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092710</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryvincible/pseuds/veryvincible</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>His hands— cold, clammy, lightly trembling— reached for the glass of water on his nightstand. His grip was tight; he knew he would drop it if given the chance.</p><p>It was lukewarm against his lips, and wholly unsatisfying. His forearms shook slightly with the tension, the tremors in his hands causing a noticeable shift in the water. It had a syrup-y quality to it as it dipped back and forth in its glass, almost, though he hadn’t noticed the difference in texture as he drank. The longer he stared, the lower the viscosity, as if it noticed him perceiving it and willfully moved with less ease.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Steve Rogers &amp; Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>You Gave Me A Stocking 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Disjointed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiyaar/gifts">Kiyaar</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Slightly more in-depth content warnings in the end notes. :-)<br/>Hope you enjoy!</p><p>-Cass</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He woke to the red of the emergency lights draped over his sheets, the wrinkles in the fabric scattering and deforming the light like rain on concrete. It was sudden in the way falling was sudden, happening too quickly and processing too slowly.</p><p>There was no blaring of alarms. There was no commotion— at least, none that he could hear. He knew better, though, than to assume that relative silence in such a sizable mansion was indicative of anything certain.</p><p><i>Five more minutes</i>, his body pleaded, nerves tightening as if aflame as he pushed himself up to sit against the headboard. His hands— cold, clammy, lightly trembling— reached for the glass of water on his nightstand. His grip was tight; he knew he would drop it if given the chance.</p><p>It was lukewarm against his lips, and wholly unsatisfying. His forearms shook slightly with the tension, the tremors in his hands causing a noticeable shift in the water. It had a syrup-y quality to it as it dipped back and forth in its glass, almost, though he hadn’t noticed the difference in texture as he drank. The longer he stared, the lower the viscosity, as if it noticed him perceiving it and willfully moved with less ease.</p><p>He set the glass down, the soft thud of its bottom against the wood of his nightstand coming moments too late.</p><p>As if on cue, his phone rang, a high sort of trill he somehow felt he hadn’t heard in quite some time. He rolled his shoulders back, his body shuddering at the movement, and reached forward to pick the phone up.</p><p>“Hello?” His voice was rough with sleep. He put his hand to the bottom of the phone, covering its mic to clear his throat.</p><p>“Tony,” Steve responded. “Where are you?”</p><p>“Just… Just getting out of bed, Cap.” And so he did. He’d been putting it off long enough, and he couldn’t bear to lie when he knew he should have gotten up the second his eyes were open. As he stood, a sharp pain panged from his temple to the base of his skull, digging into the right side of his head and pulling, as if something were trying to get inside. He raised his free hand, pressing his palm to his temple in an attempt to dull the pain for the duration of the call.</p><p>“… fireplace. Got it?”</p><p>“Sorry?”</p><p>“We need you to come to the fireplace.”</p><p>“What’s— Uh, what’s happening at the… fireplace?”</p><p>“Just where we’re meeting. Living room. I should have said living room.” </p><p>“Ah. Gotcha.”</p><p>Tony took a seat on the edge of the bed, loosening his grip on the phone to let it slide down his palm a touch. Once the <i>end call</i> button was in reach, he pressed it, though he could still hear Steve’s voice through the speaker. He was given the location. He didn’t need anything else.</p><p>Well.<br/>
Correction: He needed a break. Something to numb the pain, at least, so he wouldn’t be entirely useless to the team.</p><p>Right. Something to numb the pain.</p><p>He wouldn’t find it sitting on his ass like that. He wouldn’t get anything done.</p><p>So, he stood, releasing the phone and letting it drop to the floor with a sharp <i>crack</i>. It was resilient enough. It would be alright. The throbbing wasn’t quite exiting the forefront of his mind, but it was repetitive enough that he could at least lend some brainpower to thinking in between its beats. His legs shook with resentment as he took his slow, careful steps toward the bathroom.</p><p>The sink was running when he entered.</p><p>It was a static-y kind of noise, the sort of thing he could forgive himself for not noticing sooner. He must have been distracted. Had he been a little more awake, a little more alert, he might never have noticed it; after all, he would have been far too busy exploring the mansion for some sign of whatever danger it was that had tripped the alarms.</p><p>But he wasn’t.</p><p>It was strange— he figured the thought to investigate might have occurred to him anyway, that pain had never been a deterrent when it came to handling Avengers threats. Maybe it was the lockdown itself that allowed him pause. Maybe it was the knowledge that whatever this was, it was <i>contained</i> in a mansion full of people who could most likely survive encounters with it.</p><p>He set his hands on the edges of the sink, gripping the porcelain tight as he breathed through the beats of tension. There were spots on his palms colder than others, more sensitive than others, and he lifted a hand to investigate.</p><p>Crescent-shaped indents, cuts barely healed over, were pressed into his skin on a diagonal. </p><p>Nightmares, maybe.<br/>
It wouldn’t have been the first time.</p><p>With a sigh, he turned the faucet off, shaking his hands as if to dry them. He reached for the side of the mirror with the intent of pulling it back, of revealing the medicine cabinet behind, but he met his own eyes in his reflection and paused.</p><p>It was like he was seeing himself from a distance, the edges of himself blurred and not quite right. Upon further examination, he found nothing was particularly… <i>wrong</i>, though. He leaned in closer, taking in the sight of his eyes and the fold of his eyelids; his pupils, which seemed not to be too small or too big; his lips, chapped but not awfully so, though there was a spot of skin more red than its surroundings that Tony assumed he must have bit at some point. His jaw was the same as it always was, his facial hair was neat (but close to needing another shave), and his skin was clear and well kept. He looked like Tony Stark looked.</p><p>But there was no connection. There was no thought of, <i>These are my eyes. These are my lips. This is my skin.</i></p><p>It was a disconnect of sorts that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to him. It wasn’t so awkward or novel that he felt the need to panic, but it certainly wasn’t a <i>common</i> feeling— not to this extent, at the least.</p><p>There was no use dwelling on it. </p><p>Painkillers. Fireplace. Team.</p><p>Those were his priorities.</p><p>He pressed his fingers behind the edge of the mirror, pulling sharply to pop it open. He caught only a glimpse of yellow on the back of the mirror before the little sticky note began to pinwheel toward the ground, landing sticky side down with “You know what to do!” written cheerfully on its face. Probably from Jan, or… someone. Why they’d go so far as to invade his medicine cabinet, he didn’t know, but he figured there was no need to overthink the lighthearted attempt at reassurance.</p><p>There were four shelves in the little cabinet, all cluttered with orange prescription bottles of varying sizes. Some were emptier than others, and Tony only <i>really</i> recognized a handful. He pushed them aside to find a plain, clear-ish bottle of ibuprofen, shaking four pills out into his hand. As he put the bottle back, it toppled a handful of others over; the rattling of them falling like dominoes was loud, almost overwhelming.</p><p>The thought of bending down to return them to their rightful places was tiring, the thought of getting back <i>up</i> more so, and so he left the bathroom as it was. He glanced at his nightstand— more accurately, at that unsettling glass of water inconspicuously standing atop it— and clasped his hand over his mouth, tilting his head back to dry swallow the pills.</p><p>It crossed his mind to change, though that seemed as daunting a task as any. His pajama pants were as protective as anything else might be (anything else he was willing to subject himself to, that was, given how sensitive his skin was in the moment), and his t-shirt (plain, gray) was the same. He stepped into his slippers, brown and shaped almost like dress shoes, and opened the door to the hallway.</p><p>He stepped out, the only sound accompanying him being the soft <i>click</i> of the slippers on the dark cherry wood of the floor. It took him a moment too long to realize what seemed off about the hall.</p><p>The lights were out.</p><p>His door was open enough that, in the split second between him stepping out and wondering whether or not he should step back in, the red light spilling out of it seemed enough to make it look illuminated. The building was large enough that the hallways themselves seemed to stretch out into forever, though, and the shadows creeping along the sides of the walls where the red ended, blending into the inky blackness of the hallway’s ends, exposed that truth.</p><p>Tony reached into his pocket, closing his fingers around his phone and pulling it out. He switched on the flashlight and lifted it up; it was weak enough that it barely reached past the light from his bedroom, but it would do. </p><p>Though the mansion itself had a fairly simple floor plan, the guesswork necessary to navigate the place with any level of accuracy on one’s first try made it nigh labyrinthian. It was a carbon copy of the home Tony had grown up in, though, so familiar to him that he could probably make his way through any set path with a blindfold over his eyes. Still, the dark didn’t thrill him. It never had.</p><p>In some ways, he thought the familiarity to be less comforting; it allowed more room for his mind to get the better of him.</p><p>
  <i>Has that table always been there?</i><br/>
<i>That painting’s a few inches off, isn’t it?</i><br/>
<i>I could’ve sworn the floors weren’t this dark before.</i>
</p><p>He dismissed his own concerns, certain enough that they were little more than resurfacing childhood fears.</p><p>It was easy to recall the “games” he’d play with the mansion when he was younger. Though the thrum of its inner machinations (of which it had many, being a Stark house) brought comfort to him then, he remembered a time when it seemed almost eerie, as if the whole place were alive and breathing. In the winter, especially, on some of the coldest nights Tony had ever lived through, the mere <i>exhale</i> of the mansion’s whole being as the vents warmed made him feel hollow inside, almost to the point where he’d prefer to stay cold.</p><p>The lights were almost never on all at the same time, and as Tony grew older, he understood more why. As a child, though, he was so desperate for safety and so desperate to find some semblance of what it might feel like that he’d split almost anything into a dichotomy, some black and white reimagining of his home as a place with good spots and a place with bad spots. It was only fitting that, in a home that housed only four people (as Jarvis was the only member of the staff to <i>live</i> there— for what reason, Tony never understood), the dark made its home in far more crevices of the place than the light did.</p><p>Tony remembered being able to peek his head out of the living room (right in the middle of the whole place, just past the foyer) and see the glow of his father’s study at the end of one hall. If he was quick, he could get from one room to the other in just under seventeen seconds, careful to stay centered in the middle of the hallway in fear of what might grab him from outside if he got too close to the ceiling-to-floor windows. Howard would tolerate his company for a few minutes— even a few hours, some nights, if he was in an especially good mood— and then Tony would start all over again, only it would be even later, even darker, even more chilling to run and even more of a relief to collapse into his tired mother’s arms in a fit of anxious giggles once he’d returned to the safety of the living area.</p><p>There was no such game to be played there anymore.</p><p>He walked slowly, holding the flashlight as steadily as he could as he did so. The soft, blurred edges of its shine still shook, though, and he ignored what he saw bleeding into it from the shadows. He turned the light to the left and right of an intersection as he passed by, confirmed his isolation, and continued on when he felt something collide forcefully with his side, firm and tall. The shock of it forced the phone out of his hands and onto the ground, face up.</p><p>“<i>Shit,</i>” he breathed out, making to grab it but not having the coordination (or the visibility) to do so.</p><p>“Sorry, sorry,” came Steve’s voice from beside him. “Should have noticed the light. I wasn’t looking.”</p><p>Tony let out a soft sigh, reaching out to set his hand against Steve’s arm as if verifying he was real. It was more self-soothing than not, and Steve took it well, gently stroking Tony’s forearm before bending down to pick Tony’s phone up. He handed it back, and Tony took it gratefully— if nothing else, he was glad to have some company.</p><p>Understandably, Steve was dressed for the occasion, clad in his suit with his shield strapped to his back. His cowl was off, hanging from the back of his neck like a hood with its little wings poking out in funny directions just above his shoulder blades. Tony felt almost bare, standing beside Steve like that. Unprepared.</p><p>“Tired of waiting for me, huh?” he asked.</p><p>Steve met Tony’s eyes. He was silent for a split second too long, his gaze lingering just so. “Uh, no,” he said, when he finally spoke. “No, just worried about you. You got your comm?”</p><p>“Ah, shit. Forgot it back in the bedroom. Figured the phone would be enough, I guess, since you called.”</p><p>Steve was silent for another moment yet, and Tony almost wondered if it was him who was lagging, him who felt slower in his body than normal.</p><p>“Right,” Steve agreed. “Just stick near me. I’ll take you down to the lab, and you can plug in one of those fancy override codes, yeah?”</p><p>“You got it.”</p><p>“Where were you headed, by the way?”</p><p>Tony glanced up sharply, scanning Steve’s expression in search of anything that might read as playful, “The fireplace?”</p><p>“Right,” Steve agreed again, now too quick rather than too slow. Tony dismissed it once more; more likely than not, it was some combination of the pain and the nightmares he’d presumably had causing him to perceive discrepancies where there were none. “Going the wrong way, though, aren’t you?”</p><p>No, he wasn’t.<br/>
Couldn’t be.</p><p>He tore his eyes away from Steve and took in his surroundings. See? If he’d just kept walking and taken a right two intersections down, he’d have ended up—</p><p>Ah. In the garden court.</p><p>Wrong way.</p><p>Steve set a hand on his shoulder, patting reassuringly.</p><p>“That’s alright,” Steve said.</p><p>Tony couldn’t find it in himself to argue. His head was throbbing, the pain bleeding from his temple to the back of his right eye, and his tired bones creaked in protest when he moved. He must have made one wrong turn or… kept walking when he should have gone another direction, or something.</p><p>And he was so confident, too.</p><p>The walk to the lab was nearly silent, with the exception of Tony’s footsteps and Steve’s alongside his. Steve, more alert and clearly taking this more seriously than Tony was, stepped more quietly than he did; his boots on the wood might as well have been moccasins in snow.</p><p>Tony tried to match his volume.<br/>
He couldn’t. Whether it was a matter of willpower or simple ability in his state, he wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t. Steve didn’t seem to mind so much.</p><p>After some minutes (how many, Tony couldn’t tell, too focused on matching pace with Steve to keep track), they arrived, Steve pulling the door of the lab open and pausing to allow Tony’s entry.</p><p>To call the place dilapidated or decrepit would be to hyperbolize unnecessarily; still, though, there were few words that encapsulated quite how Tony felt about it as he entered. Much like his bedroom (and, presumably, every other major room in the mansion), it was bathed in a red glow, the caged emergency light steady in the corner. The room was in disarray, though not the post-whirlwind sort of disarray that he confronted each time he set foot in the lab to pick up a project he’d left unfinished. In fact, it was quite the opposite, parts and papers strewn about as if abandoned. Some documents lay on the floor with a fine layer of dust atop them, and a handful of them were unfortunate enough to have been contaminated by red-brown bootprints at the corners. There was no rhyme or reason to the prints— no path to follow, nor any familiarity to the size and shape of the shoes’ soles.</p><p>Tony couldn’t remember when he’d been down there last.</p><p>He looked to Steve to gauge a response and found nothing. Steve seemed wholly unsurprised, or at the very least, unaffected by the state of the room. He let go of the door, making his way to Tony’s desk as it shut behind him with a harsh <i>thud</i>.</p><p>Tony could have sworn there were particles shaken off into the air when it did so, the near-slam of its weight disturbing the accumulated grime. He almost reached out to touch it, to swipe a finger down the side of its surface and inspect more closely, but he was interrupted.</p><p>“C’mon.” Steve gestured with a sharp tilt of his head toward the computer monitor.</p><p>“Right, sorry.”</p><p>He turned away from the room, lightly pushing Steve aside with his elbow to take his place in front of the computer. When he reached up to press the monitor’s power button, his thumb landed just centimeters above it, as if it was unfamiliar to him. He slid his hand down a touch and pressed lightly, pulling back, expecting some indication that the button had been pressed at all. He knelt down to repeat the process for the actual computer itself, and was met with a similar lack of feedback.</p><p>“Uh, Jocasta?” he called out, brows furrowed as he rose from his stance.</p><p>Steve glanced up as they waited for a response; he always did, as if the AIs lived and breathed in the ceilings they spoke from. It started as something endearing, then— as all things do eventually— faded into the background and contributed to the normalcy of life in the mansion.</p><p>No response came.</p><p>“Jo?” Tony tried again.</p><p>No response.</p><p>“Does the emergency power not cover this?” asked Steve, reaching forward to press some buttons himself. Tony might have teased him for the action, might have gotten a little playful, if the circumstances weren’t different. It wasn’t so much a matter of how dire the situation was— they’d quipped their ways back and forth through plenty of more harrowing predicaments, after all. Tony just couldn’t bring himself to speak unnecessarily. His jaw was tightening with the pain of the pressure in his head. It was a miracle he was still standing, he thought.</p><p>Steve watched him thoughtfully— or, no, not thoughtfully. Steve was watching him, glancing back and forth between him and the monitor, as if waiting for Tony to act.</p><p>What was it he was expecting Tony to do, exactly?</p><p>“Tony? Does the emergency power not cover this?”</p><p>Ah. Right.</p><p>“Uh. No, no, it… should,” he answered.</p><p>Steve took a step back from the desk, straightening his back. He cast a cursory glance at the rest of the room, idly flexing and curling his fingers before jerking his head in a curt nod.</p><p>“Might be our best bet to check the backup generator, then, yeah?”</p><p>“Yeah, maybe,” Tony agreed, though he was certain the unease had slipped into his tone. Steve raised a brow as if to coax out an explanation, but Tony provided none. There was little more than the overwhelming feeling that they shouldn’t have to do this, that it shouldn’t be happening this way. It had never gone this way before.</p><p>Right?</p><p>So, why did Steve seem so unsurprised?</p><p>“Let’s head down, then,” he said.</p><p>Tony nodded, but didn’t move. There was something missing. More accurately, there was a <i>lot</i> missing, but right then, right there, Tony felt as if there was something he <i>could</i> do that he wasn’t doing.</p><p>He stood still, scanning the room slowly.</p><p>“Tony?” Steve’s voice was gentle, urging him to move.</p><p>“Suit.” It came late and all too sudden, but late was better than never, was it not? The suit. That was what he’d forgotten. “I need to grab the… suit first.”</p><p>“You don’t have to—”</p><p>“I’ll grab it.”</p><p>Tony guided himself toward the suit’s charging dock. He stretched his arm to the right with fingers barely grazing the wall, a comforting reminder of something solid he could lean against if he were to falter in his step.</p><p>He reached up to touch the suit, curling his fingers underneath the edge of its helmet to pull it away from the neck. It took both his hands to accomplish that; when the helmet finally popped off (with more effort than normal— he suspected that had something to do with the weakness of his body and, as such, paid it no mind), he stumbled back, bracing himself for a fall when Steve’s body, warm and firm, stopped him. Steve’s hands were solid on Tony’s waist, and he leaned forward a touch to allow Tony to restabilize.</p><p>“My bad.” Tony turned to face Steve, whose brows were turned inward with concern. Steve said nothing.</p><p>Tony slipped the helmet on, expecting the thing to recognize him and pull up the HUD as usual. It didn’t. He tapped the side of it twice a little aggressively, jostling his head with the motion, and for nothing. Still nothing.</p><p>He removed the helmet and, once more, looked to Steve.</p><p>“You ready to get going?” Steve asked.</p><p>“Uh, suit’s not cooperating.”</p><p>“That’s alright. I’ve got the shield.”</p><p>It wasn’t alright. The suit rarely ever failed on him like that. And if Steve was concerned enough to suit up, concerned enough to put on the <i>Cap face</i> and live on the defense, then why would he think this was alright?</p><p>Tony knew him. Tony knew him intimately. He knew how impressed Steve was with him and how capable Steve thought he was, but above all else, he knew just how unsettling it was for Steve to see exposed skin through the suit when it should have been whole. If they were being realistic about this, if there was even the slightest chance of a serious threat, then why— then <i>why</i>?</p><p>Maybe it was a waste of time.<br/>
They’d gotten as far as they did without Iron Man, after all. Tony couldn’t blame Steve for wanting to speed the whole process up. They’d never get anywhere if they didn’t have the means to control the mansion— the locks, the lights, the cameras.</p><p>Tony was just paranoid. He <i>felt</i> vulnerable, and he wanted Steve to accommodate that without noticing it. He couldn’t fault Steve for not being a mind reader.</p><p>“Alright, then,” he said. “Let’s head out.”</p><p>And so they did, the walk as quiet and unsettling as before. The hallways only seemed to get longer as time passed, a familiar phenomenon that first sprouted many, many years before the Avengers had ever stepped foot in the mansion.</p><p>Steve kept closer to Tony then than he had been, going so far as to unstrap the shield from his back and hold it protectively (albeit loosely) at his side. Between rooms, Tony’s phone light had once again become the only barrier in between them and the uncertain pitch blackness of the halls. The mansion in lockdown was more severe, more harsh than normal; where the walls were too thin or too fragile to keep danger out (or in), metal panels came down from the ceilings, connecting in the center of the walls with counterparts rising from the floors. The eerie, still scenery he used to be so scared of seeing through the windows was no longer a concern. He found himself wondering whether the smooth, prison-like gray that replaced it was any better.</p><p>Nothing would grab him from the windows.<br/>
But if something were to enter, if some threat were to be lurking among them, there would be no quick, easy escape.</p><p>He could doubt the existence of one all he wanted. The fact remained that he was boxed in, the halls getting smaller every moment he stopped to think about them. The ceiling came down until it almost touched the top of his hair, the walls just wide enough to accommodate both him and Steve. He stepped closer to Steve in anticipation of the halls narrowing further; Steve, very possibly thinking the same, took a step to his right to bump shoulders with Tony— a move that served both as function and reassurance.</p><p>The mansion was large enough to warrant multiple paths between floors. Most commonly used were the elevators, though judging by Steve’s routing, they weren’t headed toward them. Tony understood the decision, given how far to one side of the mansion they were, and there was no guarantee they’d work anyway. Tony always thought he might install more around the building, but there was something to the grandeur of the staircases littering each wing of the mansion that struck him. He didn’t consider himself a showy man, but some things felt closer to home than others. He had fond memories of his mother’s Bechstein grand piano nestled in the lounge room, large and smooth and adorned with stunning gold accents he’d run his fingers over as Jarvis polished it. He took delight in the bookends on his father’s shelves and the crystal ashtrays strewn about the house as if they cost 50 cents each.</p><p>And he liked the staircases.</p><p>Normally, he liked the staircases.</p><p>When they reached the top of the stairs leading down to the basement, “I like the staircases” was not the thought at the forefront of his mind.</p><p>Tony tilted the phone light down. It didn’t reach the basement floor.</p><p>“I can go ahead,” Steve offered. “Just keep the light pointed down.”</p><p>“Maybe we should head back for a better flashlight.”</p><p>“Kitchen’s a block away. Your phone’s alright.”</p><p>Tony sighed, tapping nervously against the back of his phone with his ring finger. The movement sent tinges of pain up his forearm, and it was only when he turned the back of his hand toward himself that he realized his nails had been chewed down to the beds. He ceased tapping and gave a nod.</p><p>Steve took a step down, and.</p><p>A sharp, shuddery breath came from behind them.</p><p>Steve moved first, stepping to Tony’s side and turning around, shield up to cover the both of them at torso level. Tony’s movements were slower, but practiced; he knew better than to play hero when so vulnerable, and he took a step back (aware of where the top step ended, careful not to fall) to make room for Steve.</p><p>“<i>God</i>,” breathed out Jan, who was still in her collared pajamas and looking none too happy. “Where have you two been?”</p><p>“We’re trying to get the generator on. You got your wings?” Tony asked, taking in the sight of her. She had the time, it seemed, to grab a flashlight. It was tucked under her arm, her left hand tightly grasping the end of it.</p><p>“Yeah, I’ve got ‘em. Do either of you have your comms?”</p><p>“Left mine back in the bedroom.”</p><p>“I’ve got mine,” Steve answered, setting the shield against his back once more. His posture was more relaxed, then— more relaxed than it had been the whole time they’d spent together. If nothing else, Tony found it in his heart to be confused before he was hurt.</p><p>“I’ve been pinging you this whole time,” Jan huffed out, though there was little bite to her words. She seemed more tired than frustrated, if the slump of her shoulders and the down-turned corners of her lips were any indication. “Shit, I thought you were still asleep.”</p><p>“That can’t be right.” Steve reached up, tugging his comm out of his ear. “Ah, hell. Been off the whole time. That’s my bad.” He flicked its little switch and placed it back.</p><p>Jan put her finger to her ear, turning away from Steve to speak. “Better?”</p><p>Steve inhaled sharply, the feedback from his ear piece audible even to Tony.</p><p>“Alright, alright, you got your payback,” Steve said through almost clenched teeth, head tilted away from the sound as he waited for it to die down.</p><p>“Yeah, you bet. C’mon, I’ve got the light.”</p><p>Jan flicked the flashlight on, pointing it down the staircase. It reached the very bottom, illuminating the concrete floor below. For a moment, Tony was grateful for it— after its offensive brightness had taken its toll on his head, at least, and he was able to fully appreciate having more than a weakly lit view of everything two feet in front of him.</p><p>And then he— at the same time as both Steve and Jan, judging by the sudden stiffness radiating off of them— noticed the moving figure just out of sight.</p><p>“Wait,” Tony whispered. “Wait, wait.”</p><p>“Jan, the light,” Steve instructed.</p><p>“No, <i>wait</i>—”</p><p>It felt as if he hadn’t spoken at all. He thought he might understand in hindsight. It was an unreasonable request, maybe, to want a second longer to breathe before confronting whatever it was in the shadows.</p><p>He felt sick almost immediately.</p><p>Two things were true:<br/>
1) The figure, whatever it was, let out a sharp, pained groan when exposed, desperate and almost familiar.<br/>
2) The figure, whatever it was, had long, brittle-looking fingers covering its face, red and raw and dripping in some unidentifiable liquid. It almost looked to be oozing.</p><p>Tony couldn’t breathe.</p><p>Steve and Jan hadn’t leapt into action. They hadn’t yelled in shock nor reared back in terror. Steve’s hand was on Tony’s arm, squeezing lightly in what Tony thought might have been an attempt at grounding him. Jan’s voice— “Oh, honey, you’re alright, we’re here, you’re alright,”— was sweet like honey in his ears, almost sickeningly so.</p><p>“Tony, c’mon, let’s…” Steve stroked down Tony’s arm gently, taking Tony’s hand in his own. “Let’s go. All good? We’re good, there’s nothing.”</p><p>Tony’s breaths, finally finding him again, came in quick and shallow. He grasped desperately for Steve’s arms, his vision blurring with each attempt to restabilize himself. Steve pulled him in, holding him steady where he was.</p><p>“I’ll take— of— him,” he heard from Jan, every other word muffled by the ringing in his ears. “You— Clint.”</p><p>“Care— yeah?”</p><p>“I know, just—”</p><p>Steve let go of him. Jan quickly took Steve’s place, wrapping an arm around Tony’s waist and pulling him close.</p><p>“Sweet— ‘cus, o—?”</p><p>“What?” he breathed out.</p><p>“Gonna need— focus, okay?”</p><p>Focus. Right. He could do that. He could do that.</p><p>Jan took his hand and placed it over her heart, careful to take deep, slow breaths. The rise and fall of her chest was exaggerated, no doubt, but it was easier to follow this way. Tony inhaled and exhaled when she did, shaky but paced. It wasn’t long before he felt ready to stand on his own two feet again, taking a step away from her with a sigh. He kept his hand on her, moving it to her bicep, just to keep the touch intact.</p><p>She offered him a reassuring smile, the concern painted clear as day on her features. When she seemed confident he would be alright, she turned to face Steve, who was standing at the bottom of the basement beside the fig— beside Clint. Clint.</p><p>Clint’s face was red around the eyes and pink everywhere else. Tony’s vision had sharpened enough that the bright purple of his hearing aids was obvious; they were coupled together on the floor, tucked up against his thighs. He was sitting against the wall, half curled up with his hands pressing into his eyes desperately.</p><p>Steve knelt beside him, clearly giving him a once-over.</p><p>“Hawkeye?” Tony heard Steve say, clearer then than he was before. “Clint, can you hear me? Just need you to recognize my voice.”</p><p>Clint’s flinches were hard to miss. He turned violently away from the source of the sound, one hand violently hitting the floor as he rushed to grab his hearing aids before shuffling away.</p><p>“Clint, need you to look at me.” Steve’s words were enunciated and slow, not loud but louder than normal. Tony understood. If Clint caught any one of the words, it might be recognizable enough for him to let his guard down. He might have been too panicked to analyze the lilt or cadence of Steve’s voice in the moment, but any little thing could be the catalyst for a moment of peace.</p><p>Steve glanced back at Jan, who nodded in response.</p><p>Steve reached out, then, slow and careful, and took gentle hold of Clint’s arm. Clint’s shocked exclamation was expected, but the softness of the action seemed to calm him long enough for him to lower his hands and open his eyes. He shut them just moments later, the jerky movement accompanied by a hiss of pain, but he wasn’t pulling away anymore.</p><p>“Cap,” he sighed. “God, <i>fuck</i>, man.”</p><p>Well. Tony couldn’t say the gaudy red, white, and blue never helped anyone. Hard to miss.</p><p>Jan’s fingers snaked around his arm, the points of her long, painted nails pressing into his skin uncomfortably as she did. She pulled him back toward the exit, and something about the movement was jarring, more disjointed than he felt it should have been. He stumbled back to follow, glancing down at the place where she was holding him.</p><p>It looked as if she’d sliced into him, five slightly curved cuts clinically impressed into his bicep. He took a slow breath as she pulled her hand away, watching the red of his blood chase her hand as she did so. She always did tend toward classic styles; the boldly colored nails looked intentional, a pleasant contrast to the pale of her skin and the dark of her hair.</p><p>“You stay there for a minute,” she instructed. He nodded dumbly, leaning against the side of the door frame and pressing a hand to his temple once again.</p><p>He thought his relative uselessness would be perceived differently. He wasn’t sure where the expectation came from, whether it be past experiences or some gross misconceptions about his team, but he thought they might have been more frustrated with him (or, at the very least, more baffled by his state). Steve and Jan had been pleasant enough, though, going so far as to be delicate with him in a manner that felt almost patronizing. His awareness of his own condition was all that kept his discomfort at bay.</p><p>Jan, he knew, was already somewhat familiar with this side of him. They’d known each other for a long while, after all, and before he was a hero, he was a friend. He thought himself to be both more and less vulnerable in those times— more likely to show his pain and weakness, yet less likely to admit that it was more of a permanent tenant in his body than an occasional visitor. He’d had his fair share of bedridden days, and Jan had her fair share of stopping in to visit in the midst of them.</p><p>Perhaps Steve’s treatment of him was just a testament to how well they knew each other; perhaps Tony was so obvious in all other struggles that this pain, this fog, happened to be a plausibility in Steve’s mind all along, and accommodating it was little more than the logical “next step” given what he’d been shown of Tony’s exhaustion already.</p><p>Had Jan been with them the whole time, Tony might have wondered whether her familiarity was a guide for Steve, some unintended experiment in unconscious mimicry that allowed Steve to copy her “oh, honey” sort of sentiment with no missteps. But she hadn’t been, and Tony was left to consider his relationship with Steve in full.</p><p>Not that he had the energy for it, then. Not really.<br/>
Not that they had the time.</p><p>It took all of his strength not to collapse then and there. Though the structure of the mansion hadn’t been abused nor neglected enough to be rotting at the seams, there was some sense of unease taking hold of him as he used the door frame, the banister of the staircase, the wall to support himself.</p><p>“Tony, sweetheart, could you move aside?” came Jan’s voice from a step or two down. He opened his eyes (having not realized that he’d closed them to begin with) and tensed at the sight of Clint beside her.</p><p>His whole face, no less red than it was moments ago, was covered in more than agitated bumps. Sharp, jagged lines were drawn in his cheeks and around the wrinkles of his eyes, spots of blood prickling where they overlapped. Tony glanced down at his hands, which were Clint-like and decidedly regular, and wondered if he’d find compressed flakes of irritated skin under Clint’s nails if he looked.</p><p>“I’m gonna rinse his eyes out,” Jan explained, turning to her side to scoot past Tony in the entryway. Clint simply followed, angling his body this way and that to make himself easier to tug along like a cooperative ragdoll. His eyes were screwed shut, the only sign of his consciousness (aside from the fact that he was standing, of course) being the subtle tilt of his head each time someone spoke. Tony wondered whether he was making an effort to piece words together or just letting the voices wash over him, much like a touch starved man might lean into a caress.</p><p>“Jan, you want to take Tony up, too?” called Steve from below. Perturbed as Tony was, being spoken about as if he wasn’t present, he was almost grateful for the fact that no response would be expected of him. “I’ll stay down and try to figure this out.”</p><p>Almost.</p><p>He really would have preferred to be asked personally.</p><p>“Mmhm,” Jan hummed in response. “Tony, your phone? I left the flashlight downstairs.”</p><p>At least Jan had the right idea, though he supposed she couldn’t have asked anyone else to take the phone from his pocket.</p><p>He flicked the weak flashlight on, using his forearm to push himself away from the bit of wall he’d been leaning against. He took a moment to stabilize, Jan watching him closely. Once his unsteady sways had ceased and his feet were firmly planted, she continued onward, and they began the trek to the kitchen.</p><p>He found himself watching Clint’s movements too closely, the jerky motions of his head too sudden to tear his eyes from. Every so often, Clint would hesitate or flinch, sometimes going so far as to turn his head in a different direction entirely, and Tony’s instinct to point the flashlight where he felt Clint was instructing was strong. Jan was patient, correcting the paranoid shifts with a quick, “Tony, light, please,” every time.</p><p>Each time he was spoken to, he felt more distant from the team, less and less certain that the lockdown was the only issue in need of resolving. What the other might have been, he didn’t know. That felt intentional.</p><p>Maybe he’d ask Jan.</p><p>“Careful,” Clint said, before he had the chance. Clint’s voice was as raw as the skin of his face. “There’s someone here.”</p><p>Jan paused, still and quiet as a mouse. “Right now?”</p><p>No response.</p><p>“Clint, right now?”</p><p>Clint’s brows furrowed. He leaned a centimeter or two closer to Jan in what Tony assumed was an attempt to make heads or tails of her words. He shook his head; whether it was a response or an admission of defeat was unclear.</p><p>“Tony, keep an eye out,” Jan warned.</p><p>“Yeah.” He wished he could say he was more steady with the light rather than less, but there was something to the almost grid-like quality of the mansion that felt dangerous. There were so many ins and outs, so many doors and halls, so many ways to reach one of the four corridors at any intersection, that predicting anyone’s movement was nearly impossible without technological aids.</p><p>It was difficult to look and walk straight without casting glances over his shoulder.</p><p>Clint returned to his careful attempts at listening, and when he moved, Tony could swear he was starting to hear things, too. He’d remembered something Clint said before, something about how his hearing was so poor even with the aids that spatial awareness had more to do with his sight than anything else, but maybe the whole place was quiet enough that Clint was picking up on what he might not have before. That was possible, right? It wasn’t <i>likely</i>, but it had to be possible— there was no other explanation as to why his semi-paranoid twists and turns seemed so accurate. Tony heard, too, after all. Tony heard.</p><p>A scuttle to the right. A hiss to the left. Scraping in the floorboards and low, quiet murmurs all around. The place felt oddly more lively than it did just moments ago— lively, yes, though not welcoming in the slightest. The slow breathing of the mansion, the creaks of the stairs and the exasperated sighs of the windows, had been overshadowed.</p><p>It was as if the place had become overtaken by parasites, its poor body shutting down in a sad attempt to imply that there was no life there, at least none worth advertising; sympathetically, with the concern he might have felt for a family member, Tony thought, <i>get well soon.</i></p><p>Against all odds, they reached the kitchen— cast in the red glow that Tony expected— with little issue. Jan led Clint to the sink, turning the faucet on and tilting his head downward. He followed obediently, orienting himself appropriately in order to rinse his eyes out. Jan gave him a reassuring pet on the shoulder and then moved for the drawer, undoubtedly to grab another flashlight.</p><p>Tony, still too achy for his common sense to kick in fully, at least had the foresight this time to shut his eyes and face away before she turned it on to check its battery. He waited until he heard a second <i>click</i> of its button to open his eyes again.</p><p>“I’ll take care of his face,” Jan said, returning to Clint. She reached for his hand, gently unfurling his fingers to take the hearing aids from his grip. He didn’t put up a fight. “Could you wash these for me?”</p><p>Tony took the aids, standing by one side of the sink while Clint and Jan took the other. The process was methodical, Clint uncharacteristically quiet the whole way through. Jan took the rest of the milk from the fridge to help cool points of agitation on Clint’s face, and Tony got to wiping the residue off of the hearing aids with a slightly damp paper towel and dish soap. It wasn’t ideal, but under the circumstances, he felt it was appropriate.</p><p>By the time he was done, Clint was wrapping the wash up on his own. Jan stepped back, but stood by in case she was needed; she stepped in again only to help Clint dry his face, patting gently with a microfiber towel so as not to irritate anything further.</p><p>Clint blinked twice, both times hard and frustrated. He ran his index finger anxiously over the knuckle of his thumb, only stopping when Jan took his hand again, turning it palm-up so Tony could drop the hearing aids into his grip. Clint seemed grateful for that, at least, delicately putting them back in and reaching up to switch them on.</p><p>“Good?” asked Jan. </p><p>“A little better,” Clint answered. “Still got— I still got shit, though, like it’s… burning. Blurry.”</p><p>“It’ll probably feel that way for a while.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“You need a change of clothes?” Tony asked.</p><p>Clint shook his head tiredly and leaned against the counter, then, fiddling with the dial on the aids. Tony cringed at the inconsistent ringing, shrill and unsteady, that came from them. He turned away.</p><p>The three stayed like that for a long moment; the light, the company, and the quiet made the kitchen feel safer than Tony thought it might have been. He watched as the pad of Jan’s thumb smoothed over the rubber cover of the flashlight switch, body tensing slightly every time the tip of her nail scratched over its surface.</p><p>“I saw someone,” Clint said, once everyone had been given time to breathe. “Earlier. Before you guys came down. I woke up to the whole place locked down, my bow was gone—”</p><p>“Your bow?” Tony tore his gaze away from Jan’s hands, focusing fully on Clint.</p><p>“Bow and quiver both. Still had the gun in my nightstand, though. I grabbed it, headed out to look for everyone, and… Jesus, it was dark as shit. Saw some shadow at the end of a hallway and fired a warning shot. I figured if it was one of you, you’d say something. Instead, I got some… fucking smoke bomb full of pepper spray. The damn thing rolled out like a Lego Death Star and sprayed the shit out of me. Kind of looked like something Nat has in her bedroom.” Clint reached up as if to rub his eyes, but Jan grabbed his hand, holding onto it for the second it took Clint to remember why that might not be the best idea. He let his hands fall uselessly back to his sides, fingers automatically curling to fidget with the hem of his shirt.</p><p>“Do you have any idea what you might have seen?” Tony prompted further, desperately seeking any sign of an abnormal disturbance in Clint’s expression. He wasn’t sure quite what he was looking for; Clint had no reason to conceal anything. If he said he saw a shadow, the rest of them could trust that a shadow was all it was.</p><p>“No,” Clint said in response. He shifted uncomfortably, and in a half-joking tone, he added, “Someone that doesn’t like being shot at, I guess. I’d bet it’s just some dipshit with a utility belt, Batman-style.”</p><p>Jan hummed, noncommittal, and flicked the flashlight on without warning. Tony’s hand came up to cover his eyes almost instantly.</p><p>“Oh, sorry, sorry.” She pointed the bulb of it down to let Tony adjust, reaching out to pat his shoulder as he did.</p><p>“You’re good. Just unexpected.” He lowered his hand again. Clint and Jan both seemed ready to head back out. Though Tony knew it was most likely Clint responding to Jan’s preparation, part of him couldn’t help but wonder if he was out of the loop, if Steve was telling them something that Tony wasn’t hearing.</p><p>He was just paranoid. Nervous. Worried, he thought— he <i>wanted</i> to hear from Steve, <i>wanted</i> to know the guy was alright, and he was… used to receiving that information directly. That was all. It was on his mind.</p><p>“Cap’s calling us to the living room,” Jan said, then.</p><p>Okay, so, not just paranoid.</p><p>Thankfully, that trek was less of one than the others had been. There were no steep, daunting staircases, and the living room was just a few yards down the hall. Still, Clint took Jan’s arm as they walked; Tony was sure his blurred vision wasn’t serving him well in the dark, monochrome hallways.</p><p>They arrived before Steve did. Curiously, no red light greeted them.</p><p>Jan led Clint to the couch, slowly easing him down before taking a seat beside him. She reached out to set the flashlight bulb-up on the coffee table; it reflected off the high ceiling’s crystal-like light fixture, casting scattered shards of white-blue over the walls, floors, and furniture. The fractured texture of the glow almost concealed the fate that had befallen the emergency light’s caged bulb. It had been shattered itself, its glass pieces collecting in the bottom of the cage and sticking out just so.</p><p>Tony glanced back at Jan. She gave him an assuring (albeit worried) smile, gesturing to the empty space on the couch beside her. Tony didn’t move, standing still where he was. By the fireplace.</p><p>It was right, but wrong— right place, wrong time, right… time. Steve asked for him to be there, asked for <i>all</i> of them to be there, but he asked Tony twice. The room was supposed to look one way and it didn’t; it was supposed to be <i>red</i>, damn it, and the discrepancy bothered him more there than it did in any of the hallways, and.</p><p>Everything was out of place. Whether it felt more or less rotten than it should have, Tony wasn’t sure. He hadn’t articulated his expectations, hadn’t even <i>thought</i> of them until he got there and they weren’t met.</p><p>A clatter— sharp, clanging, like metal on metal— came from the hallway, shocking him out of his uneasy daze.</p><p>“Probably Cap,” he said. Before Jan could get up, he added, “I’ll check it out.”</p><p>“I can take care of it,” she argued. “Just stay here for a minute.”</p><p>“I’m already up, I’ve got it.” He passed by the couch on his way out into the hall, grabbing the flashlight as well as the handgun Clint was so helpfully holding up for him to take. Just in case.</p><p>The first thing he saw when he poked his head out, as expected, was Steve with a tight-lipped smile. His shield was held firmly in one arm, the flashlight pointing downward from behind it. His second sight was less friendly; it was further back down the hallway, closer to where Tony thought he’d heard the clatter, its features spread thin and difficult to discern from the spots of darkness concealing it. There was a hint of that same liquid he’d seen dripping from— from Clint’s hands, from— sloshing slowly back and forth in his glass, it was—</p><p>It was oozing from the ceilings, from something that might have been teeth or nails or something else. Whatever it was, it was the kind of brown-yellow-green that looked as if it was white once with textured vertical streaks and crumbly divots serving as signs of rot. Tony caught a glimpse of what could have been skin or fabric or something resembling either. There were web-like marks almost like healing lacerations branching out from certain points, giving the skin or fabric or whatever it happened to be an almost leathery quality. As he raised his flashlight to get a closer look, everything he’d seen reared back in quick, jerky movements just enough to be concealed again, with the exception of two purple-green spots of reflection that disappeared when he blinked.</p><p>Despite how slow he’d felt since he woke, his movements were quick.</p><p>He took a step to the side, raised the gun, and shot.</p><p>Once. Twice. Three times. He heard Steve exclaim, heard Jan’s “What’s going on?”s from the living room, heard the commotion as the gun was taken from him, heard a fourth shot and a fifth.</p><p>Again, he pointed the flashlight down the hall. He saw nothing.</p><p>“Tony, what— <i>What?</i>” Steve took his arm, urging him none too delicately into the living room and staring through him, brows furrowed and gaze a nigh inscrutable mixture of concern and frustration.</p><p>“There was something behind you,” Tony said, voice firmer than he’d let it be since waking.</p><p>“The guy?” Clint asked. </p><p>“No, it was— It was different, it was like…” Try as he might to wrack his brain for anything to compare it to, there was no creature nor threat they’d dealt with that matched the description. He wasn’t sure what the description <i>was</i>, even, not in any meaningful way. All that came to mind was <i>it had eyes, it had nails, it had teeth,</i> and who would that help?</p><p>He sat in the armchair diagonal to the couch, elbows resting on his knees and eyes fixed on the table in front of them. Steve stood opposite the couch and Jan, as before, took her seat beside Clint.</p><p>“It was behind Steve.” Tony started over, in hopes that attempting to recall the details chronologically might do him better. “A few— It was lagging behind, it was at the second intersection down, and there was— <i>dripping</i>, I think. When I shot, it— it was gone.”</p><p>He glanced up to gauge the reactions of his teammates, only to find that Steve and Jan were looking at each other instead,  Jan’s brows turned inward and hands in her lap, a little too prim and proper for the situation at hand. Steve reached a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, head tilted down as he took a moment before speaking.</p><p>“Okay,” he said, though it sounded forced. “Anyone see anything else?”</p><p>It was then that Clint chimed in. The tonal shift was immediate; Steve and Jan seemed focused again, willing to listen again. They looked open and— and <i>normal</i> again, and Tony felt trapped by it, borderline <i>neglected</i> by it.</p><p>“Did you hear me over the comms?” Clint asked.</p><p>“The intruder bit? Lego Death Star? Yeah, I got that,” Steve answered. “Where did you say that happened?”</p><p>“I didn’t. East wing, though. It was in the hall beside the training room.”</p><p>“Does anyone know if there’s anyone else here? It’s just us, isn’t it?” Jan leaned forward, her posture loosening and her hands reaching for the flashlight in Tony’s hands. He’d forgotten he had it; only then did he realize he’d been trembling again, the light wavering uncertainly around the room. He handed it over, though he wasn’t thrilled to do so.</p><p>Steve nodded. “Just us four. Carol’s been at her place for a while, and no one else is scheduled to be back here until… tomorrow night, if I’m remembering right.”</p><p>“Well, I’m out of commission for the rest of this, I think. I’d love to help, but.” Clint’s tone was light as he spoke, almost joke-like, but his lips were pulled together in a tight line, his unfocused gaze landing somewhere on the ground. Again, he fidgeted with the hem of his shirt, never content to sit still, especially not in such uncertain times.</p><p>“We’re a chain with two weak links, then, Steve,” Jan lamented. “What’re you thinking?”</p><p>Tony caught the slip of Jan’s face, the casual posture turned stiff again. He caught the way Steve’s eyes widened a fraction of an inch, flickering back and forth between them.</p><p>“What do you mean?” Tony sat up straighter, meeting Steve’s eyes.</p><p>No response. Tony was getting fucking tired of that.</p><p>“Steve, what does that mean?”</p><p>“It doesn’t mean anything,” Steve answered.</p><p>“Tony, honey, you should lay down,” Jan interjected.</p><p>“No, fuck that, <i>fuck</i> that. What are you talking about?”</p><p>Steve let out a frustrated huff, fingers flexing and curling inward anxiously. He couldn’t pace— it would be too obvious of a tic, too noticeable. Tony knew that much.</p><p>“Tony,” Steve started, and Tony scoffed before Steve even got the chance to explain himself. “We really mean nothing by it. You’ve been slow. You’re… clearly in pain. You don’t have the suit. That’s all.”</p><p>It made sense.</p><p>That was kind of the problem. It didn’t just make sense, it made so much sense that Tony felt off for responding the way he did, almost crazy for not seeing it. The dark was getting to him, he figured, making him paranoid.</p><p><i>Last time you thought that, you were wrong,</i> something inside him said. <i>Maybe you’re the only one here with your head screwed on straight.</i></p><p>But he wasn’t. He couldn’t have been. Jan had been nothing but helpful since she showed up. Steve was… Steve-like, though clearly out of sorts. But Steve had issues of his own, and maybe Tony was doing him a disservice attributing all of Steve’s stress and frustration to himself. Clint was believable, more believable than the other two and more innocent-seeming, too. If there <i>was</i> something hidden from him, Clint either wasn’t in on the secret or… was, and it was serious enough for him to pull out all the stops in order to conceal it. Out of all of them, Clint may have been both the most casually honest and the best at lying, simultaneously making him a comfort and a source of unease.</p><p>“Fine,” Tony finally agreed. “You could have said that to begin with.”</p><p>“I know. I’m sorry.” Steve’s head was partially hung, in shame or disappointment or <i>something</i>, and the fact that Tony couldn’t tell what it was would have infuriated him, had he been more volatile. But he wasn’t, was he? He was tired, he was in pain, he was vulnerable— all those things, yes, but not volatile.</p><p>“Not to ruin the mood, here,” Clint interrupted, “but my comm— the whole hearing aid on that side, actually, is starting to feel kind of waterlogged. I’ve got a back-up pair in my quarters?” His tone was curious but not pleading, more of an <i>anything we can do about this?</i> than a serious request.</p><p>It occurred to Tony that the tone might have been forced, too, an effort to change the topic and lighten the air in the room. He couldn’t say he appreciated it. He couldn’t say he didn’t.</p><p>Steve met Jan’s eyes again, the rise and fall of his shoulders accompanying his tense, measured breath barely noticeable.</p><p>“I can take you back,” she said to Clint. “And Cap and Shellhead can investigate the hall, if they’d be so kind. If there was something there, maybe there’s a sign of it.”</p><p>Steve nodded. There was something recognizably intimate about it, both an acknowledgment and a sign of relief, a <i>good work figuring that one out</i> of sorts that felt almost co-parental; Tony had been on the receiving end of that gesture more times than he could count. He wasn’t sure whether it was the subtle air of rejection about it that time that bothered him, or if it had more to do with that ever-increasing desire to just <i>know</i> something, to be on the same page as everyone else for two seconds at least.</p><p>He’d try to leave it be. They’d sort it all out later, he was sure.</p><p>Clint and Jan took one flashlight. Steve and Tony took the other. They went their separate ways.</p><p>Steve was in charge of the light this time, shield still held firmly in front of the pair. He seemed less sure about their positioning than he did before, constantly switching between taking a step forward to hold the shield in front of Tony and taking a step back to keep an eye on him.</p><p>“I’m not going anywhere, you know,” Tony said, once the indecisiveness became more distracting than not.</p><p>“I know,” Steve replied curtly.</p><p><i>Then act like it</i>, Tony kept himself from saying.</p><p>With no flashlight to keep his hands busy and the sinking feeling that maybe he wasn’t contributing as much to their pseudo-mission as he’d like to have been, his restlessness only grew. His eyes tracked every inch the light touched, tracing around the edges of the hall rapidly— <i>left wall, ceiling, right wall, floor, left wall, ceiling, right wall, floor…</i></p><p>He didn’t trust himself to recall proper details about what it was he had seen, as he truthfully didn’t see much at all. He’d seen enough to know he saw something— that was it. It was a gut feeling, then, that told him he would have more luck scanning sharp lines than he would peering into the never-ending blackness of the hallway, unremedied even with the reach of the sturdier light.</p><p>His senses blended together after some time, the crispness of each footstep fading into something more malleable. There was a sound of sorts, and a sight of sorts, and he felt as if his legs weren’t moving so smoothly anymore. They were barely attached to him, it felt like, loose and shambling forward by suggestion alone. Even the sight of Steve was distorting, blurring into the darkness. Steve’s voice was faint, muffled in his ears. Steve said something or another, and Tony hummed neutrally in response.</p><p>It was then that he caught a glimpse of it, lurking with a clarity no other visual was providing. Tony stepped toward it, eyes focused on it like a pocket watch in the hands of a hypnotist.</p><p>Long, slender fingers. Long, sharp nails. </p><p>They seemed elegant at first, almost like Jan’s always did, until Tony realized just how long and just how slender they were. They curled around the edge of an intersection, knuckles wide and almost bruised, skin taut as if pulled tight over bone and yet unbreaking with movement. The sections in between each knuckle were thin and looked jointed themselves, the fingers bending and curling more smoothly than any person’s could as the nails dragged along the wall, both threatening and beckoning.</p><p>The closer Tony got, the more sickly the fingers became. The too-tight skin (with gaps underneath it, Tony realized, where the knuckle turned to long bone) was too pale, veins nonexistent. The nails weren’t <i>long</i> so much as they were jutted out, as if the skin pushed them down without growing any new nail at the bed. It was an approximation of familiar imagery, looking more like an abstract painting of a human done by someone who’d never seen one before than anything else.</p><p>
  <i>only…</i><br/>
<i>oh—</i>
</p><p>He could almost make out the words buzzing around his head. Not quite. Almost.</p><p>
  <i>only</i><br/>
<i>To</i>
</p><p>Closer.</p><p>
  <i>Tony</i>
</p><p>A hand landed on his shoulder from behind, grip tightening on his collarbone. The fingers turned inward and <i>pulled</i>, pulled tighter than Tony thought a hand could pull, its nails digging in and his shirt sticking to his chest with something dark, something slow and dense and spreading out toward his stomach. He heard the <i>crack!</i> of bone, felt pulled taut, tugged upward. His breaths weren’t coming in at all, and part of him thought maybe he couldn’t breathe, maybe he’d never breathe again. The empty, clammy cold his extremities housed had made its way up his arms, up his legs, gripping tight around his torso and squeezing. His ribs popped individually, the sharp, jagged edges piercing everything that made him up and tearing outward. He felt his eyes bulge, and it was almost as if his own hands were lengthening and cracking and pulling at the skin, fingers moving in ways they never had before.</p><p>He stared at the hand he’d been watching so intently, and he found that its motion hadn’t been smooth at all; it had no extra joints, only breaks in bone. There was no beckoning call. The hand ragdolled, the joint of the wrist snapping upward and downward quickly, leaving Tony to wonder how he ever thought it to be a careful, enticing movement.</p><p>He thought his own hands might have been swaying, too; he could no longer control them on his own, nor could he control his arms (which felt thinner than before and weaker than before) or his shoulders. He stared, eyes wide, trying desperately to step back, to go back to moments before when he was walking willfully rather than being pushed or pulled or guided forward toward the dead-like image then reaching out for him.</p><p>“<i>Tony</i>,” Steve pleaded, his grasp on Tony’s shoulder sliding gently down to the elbow. “Look at me. Tony, look at me, you’re fine, I’ve got you.”</p><p>“What?” Tony breathed out, immediately glancing down to examine himself. Nothing out of order. Nothing out of place. He checked back where the beckoning siren had been clawing at the wall, finding no trace of it save for small, ever so slightly pigmented scratches in the paint. “I saw— I saw it.”</p><p>“Tony, what?”</p><p>“There was something— It was there, it was right—” Tony ran a desperate hand over his face, legs static and weak as he charged forward. “Here, it was here, it—”</p><p>Steve’s expression was pained, to say the least. He looked as tired and lost as Tony felt, gently taking hold of Tony’s arm and pulling him forward. Steve’s grip was tight, his arms around the whole of Tony’s body. Tony’s arms were nearly pinned to his sides, the immobilization almost straitjacket-like, but Tony made no effort to pull away. He relaxed himself, letting his weight fall against Steve, who had no qualms about holding him this way.</p><p>Steve took in a breath, deep but measured. Tony felt the rise and fall of Steve’s chest against his as he did so, taking comfort in it. Steve’s palm splayed over Tony’s back and caressed from the top of his spine to his waistline, his grip loosening long enough for him to pull away and take the sight of Tony’s face in before pressing in close again.</p><p>“You saw it too?” Tony asked, voice quiet and wavering. He tried to mimic Steve’s soothing movements, stroking his hand lightly down Steve’s back. Steve gave no confirmation, but the answering exhale (sharp, sudden, almost sob-like) was answer enough.</p><p>“Just—” Steve’s loose grip on Tony’s arm lingered even when he stepped out of the hold. He made no move to continue on, though his gaze shifted to the corridor before them, eyes trained on some point in the darkness. “Stay here, and I’ll… I’ll move forward. Might be that trespasser Clint mentioned.”</p><p>“What?” To say Tony was scandalized would be an understatement. “Trespasser? Steve, I saw— <i>You</i> saw— I <i>told</i> you what it was, I told you what I saw, I told you where—”</p><p>“Right, right, I’m sorry,” Steve said, all too quickly. His cadence had a pleading tone to it, soft and almost pacifying. “But Clint saw something different. We’re exploring all avenues at this point. We’re keeping our minds open.”</p><p>“No, you’re fucking not. You weren’t keeping your mind open, you were going with his story. Did you hear him? Really? He didn’t see shit!”</p><p>“Tony, quiet. Please. Just let me—”</p><p>“Let you what? Let you <i>what</i>?”</p><p>At that point, Tony wasn’t the only one trembling. He saw how Steve’s fists were clenched at his sides, shaking with tension. The remorse washed over him almost instantly. He lowered his shoulders from their panicked, heightened place, feeling the deep ache of his muscles as he tried to relax them. He took in a breath, nice and slow, and waited some seconds before exhaling.</p><p>Inhale.<br/>
Exhale.</p><p>Inhale— Steve joined him that time, tired eyes trained on his.<br/>
Exhale— Steve’s fists unclenched.</p><p>They both needed a second.</p><p>Steve bent down, picking up the flashlight from where he’d dropped it. Tony hadn’t noticed its absence until then.</p><p>“Let’s go,” Steve sighed, moving forward once more. There was no bite in him left. That was one thing they had in common, at least.</p><p>“Where are we headed now?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Around.”</p><p>“We could check where Clint was. East garden, he said?”</p><p>“East wing. Training room.” Steve paused. “You want to?” </p><p>Tony shrugged. “We haven’t been out here for long, have we? They’d probably take as long as us to get back to the main room if we went.”</p><p>Steve nodded, took a second to mull it over, and started them down the hallway to their right.</p><p>The levity of their moment only lingered for so long; it took only a few steps for the weighted dreariness of the place to sink in again, the halls narrowing once more. Tony was grateful for the company. He stuck close to Steve again, more out of his own desire to be close than out of fear of the walls forcing them together. He received that familiar shoulder bump, Steve casting a glance and an exhausted, anxious smile at him.</p><p>Strangely, there was a serenity to the quiet then that hadn’t been there before. It might have had something to do with the blossoming aches and pains ever-increasing in severity, as well as the prolonged exposure to the severe metal plating and the darkness that enclosed them. It felt as if they were on the right track— with each other, with the mansion, with the creature.</p><p><i>You know what to do</i>, his mind reassured him. He did. The two of them did.</p><p>The walk seemed shorter than the others. If Tony were still a child, he might have pictured it as the mansion willfully accommodating him; after all, he’d just been through something awful, hadn’t he? The house knew.</p><p>It could be unforgiving at times, wholly unpredictable as any other entity might be. The warmth of its walls had been absent to him in his coldest times. But there was always a blanket when he needed one, always food in the fridge, and the calm, warm hum of the home underneath his feet. Maybe it felt remorseful for what it had allowed in the past. Maybe it was making amends. Maybe it was just as frightened as they were.</p><p>The hall very well could have shortened itself out of kindness alone. There wouldn’t be any way for Tony to tell if it had.</p><p>He and Steve entered the room together. It was anything but natural; it was, perhaps, the most reinforced area of the entire mansion, with some bunker-esque exceptions. Normally, the lights were a bright blue-white, but under the circumstances, the color palette had morphed more to what Steve and Tony had come to expect through the day— plain, simple red. Despite this, the colored mats covering the walls and floors and the sheer amount of open space made stepping inside comparable enough to a breath of fresh air.</p><p>“See anything?” Steve asked, pausing by the edge of the mat. He bent down, pulled at the knot in one of his shoelaces, and began to toe his boot off.</p><p>“Whoa, hey, hey,” Tony set his hand on Steve’s shoulder, lightly tugging him up. “Force of habit, huh?”</p><p>“Ah. Yeah, must be. Whoops.”</p><p>Steve handed the flashlight back to Tony, clicking it off as he did so, before kneeling down and lacing the boot back up. Tony, in typical Tony fashion, left to check the hallways just past both possible entrances.</p><p>“On the off chance that this <i>is</i> a common intruder,” Steve started, words slow and careful, “wouldn’t it make sense for them to screw around in the control room, here? I mean, we’ve got analytics on our strengths and weaknesses dating back to God knows when.”</p><p>“Yeah. Guess so,” Tony answered, unwilling to let his fear get the best of him, unwilling to pick fights over what Steve was clearly framing as an avenue now rather than the main path. He could humor the possibility. “They probably wouldn’t find much, though. Not much of a paper trail in there.”</p><p>“Well, good for us.”</p><p>“Good for us.”</p><p>“If you wanted to check it out, just for any trace of visitors, I could do a lap around the halls? See if I find anything?”</p><p>Tony’s brow raised. He watched as Steve stood, lightly shaking the foot the boot was on as if recalibrating the whole limb. </p><p>“You want us to split up?” Tony asked.</p><p>“It’s hardly splitting up. Won’t be more than a few hundred feet from you at any given time.”</p><p>“<i>That</i> makes me feel safer.”</p><p>“Just a suggestion. If you don’t want to, you don’t want to.” Steve’s voice had a lilt about it, light and gentle, but it was an obvious reassurance.</p><p>Tony smoothed his thumb over the switch of the flashlight, a mimicry of the self-soothing gesture he’d seen from Jan. He glanced back at the entrances, took in the sight of the darkened hallways, and looked back to Steve.</p><p>“You sure you’ll be alright?”</p><p>“’Course I will. We’ve handled worse than this.”</p><p>“You take the flashlight. I’ve got the phone.”</p><p>Steve agreed, holding his hand out for the light and waiting for Tony to get the phone set up. If not for practicality’s sake, Tony thought Steve might have refused. There was little debate to be had, though, and once Tony’s weak little light was on, Steve set off.</p><p>“You be careful,” Tony called after him.</p><p>“Careful’s my middle name.”</p><p>And Steve was gone.</p><p>Tony stepped out of the training room and into the adjacent door. The control room, aptly named, was set up for the monitoring, altering, and logging of training protocols. It hid behind a large panel of one-way glass on one side of the room, split into two floors— the bottom for housing equipment and bots, and the top for actually doing the controlling. Tony figured his best bet would be to check the upper floor; if someone was looking for information, that was where they’d find it. Not only that, but it would be more obvious whether or not it had been searched.</p><p>The stairs were steep. Tony almost regretted agreeing to split up, if only because he thought it might be much more comfortable a journey if Steve were there to carry him. He continued on, though. There was no other option, aside from sitting uselessly on the training room floor.</p><p>As he entered, he flicked the light switch up out of habit. The room lit up, fluorescent bulbs clinical and shocking to Tony’s system, unexpected despite Tony being the one to turn the damn things on in the first place. He reached up to cover his face, letting out a frustrated huff as he, once again, attempted to adjust.</p><p>Well. If nothing else, that made the search easier. Maybe Clint and Jan stopped by the generator on their trip and figured out whatever Steve hadn’t.</p><p>The place looked lived in, but relatively untouched; there was nothing out of place that didn’t seem organic. One of the chairs had been pushed to the center of the room, an abandoned mug of coffee sat on the control panel, and a cardigan was draped over one of the tables. There didn’t seem to be any cause for concern.</p><p>Might as well take a seat and wait for Steve to return, if there was nothing else to be seen. He thought so, at least, before catching a glimpse of movement behind one of the training room doors. He leaned closer to the glass, as if being some inches less removed from the scene would give him a better view of what was happening all the way down there.</p><p>Bucky entered.<br/>
Bucky, unaccounted for in the team’s roll call, entered. Bucky, who had no way of getting into the mansion in the middle of a lockdown, entered.</p><p>Tony stared. He watched as Bucky moved almost aimlessly around the room, his stance stiff and his joints too restricted, almost as if he were a Ken doll come to life. Tony wondered, briefly, if he’d been in the mansion all along and no one accounted for him, no one knew he was home. But that wasn’t right, was it? If Steve hadn’t noticed, then Clint would have, surely— they talked, didn’t they?</p><p>There was something off about the way Bucky’s shoulders— no, shoulder, just the left— sat. It looked loose, almost, but… still firmly attached. It jutted out awkwardly. That was it.</p><p>Tony had half the mind to push the “intercom” button in front of him, to take full advantage of the speakers and invite Bucky up for a tune-up. It was yet another force of habit. Arm fucked? Tony fixed it. Some of the time, at least.</p><p>But he refrained. He was glad he did.</p><p>Upon closer examination, it wasn’t that Bucky’s arm was <i>out</i> so much as it was <i>ill fitting</i>, short in proportion to the rest of him. His other limbs were elongated, his hair less smooth than normal; it had a stuck-together-ness reminiscent of an oil spill. His nails, usually trimmed or chewed to the beds, were sharp and pointed. </p><p>He stopped in the middle of the room and turned toward one of the entrances, head tilted to the side at a sharp angle and jaw practically unhinged, unconnected to the rest of his skull. It hung strangely, falling almost perpendicular to the rest of his head, with sharp, rotting, black-ish (in the light, at least) teeth inches long crammed into his available gum space. The “oil spill” analogy rang truer than before, a dark liquid seeping down from his forehead (Tony couldn’t tell quite where it was coming from, as it blurred into his hairline) and bleeding into his eyes, into his mouth, down his neck and chest.</p><p>
  <i>You know what to do.</i>
</p><p>The control room, aptly named, was set up for the monitoring, altering, and logging of training protocols.</p><p>A handful of those protocols, at their highest intensities, were less than recommended without supervision. There was nothing stopping the bots from using lethal force if they so chose to, aside from the emergency <i>stop</i> button in the control room.</p><p>Tony tore his gaze away from Bucky.<br/>
He neatly pressed “select all” in the protocol list, turned the difficulty levels up to high, and allowed his hand to hover over the <i>start</i> button.</p><p>He cast one last, doubtful glance at Bucky.<br/>
Bucky’s neck twisted, veering back impossibly.<br/>
Through the one-way glass, his eyes met Tony’s.</p><p>Tony pressed the button.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The lights were off when Steve entered. Tony wasn’t sure when the power had cut out again. He wasn’t sure why.</p><p>He sat at the control panel, eyes trained on the outline of the body— the main bit of it, at least, as it was far from the rest of the pieces— on the training room floor. Every so often, he caught movement—  slender fingers twitched among the carcasses, marks of death in Tony’s eyes.</p><p>“Tony?” Steve asked, setting his hand on the back of the chair. “You alright? Anything to report?”</p><p>Tony said nothing. It was his turn to be silent.</p><p>If he weren’t still recovering from the shock of watching a carbon copy of a friend getting torn to shreds, maybe he could have reveled in that.</p><p>“Nothing on my end,” Steve continued. His hand moved down to Tony’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “Tony?”</p><p>He clicked the flashlight off and set it down, finally turning to follow Tony’s line of sight. It took him a moment, understandably; the segments of the body were strewn about the crowd of mangled bots, nearly the entire floor covered in human-like shapes.</p><p>Steve’s eyes widened at the sight of those alone. He’d connect the dots, Tony thought. He must have gotten power back, too, for those few minutes. Right?</p><p>
  <i>Nothing on my end.</i>
</p><p>Right?</p><p>Tony could pinpoint the exact moment the body was recognized among its mechanical murderers. Steve’s grip on his shoulder tightened and then released, his flattened hand soothing over the area he’d squeezed as if to check for cracks. Steve didn’t turn to face him, though, didn’t pull his eyes away from the mess Tony had made.</p><p>Tony couldn’t pull his eyes away from it, either. Not as it was happening. Not in the aftermath. He understood.</p><p>The blood was difficult to make out under the light of the training room, every dark color blurring together in some mess of shadows. Bucky’s body was closer to the corner of the room, his hand still curled desperately around the handle of the door, held up by its awkward angle. It was there that the tear of his skin was the most obvious, pieces of it stretched to the point of whiteness, the jagged lines matching their counterparts on his wrist some feet away. The limbs themselves weren’t mangled to the point of being unrecognizable; the bots knew, as they were programmed to know, that there was no reason to attack what was no longer moving. Detached limbs bled only for themselves.</p><p>His torso barely looked to be one, its entire lower half a muddled mess of parts. His skin wasn’t distinguishable from what it used to house. Pieces of hair were visible only atop the silver bodies of the bots beside him. When Tony made the effort to look closely, he could see bone in roughly the shape of ribs, though it appeared to have caved in on itself at some point or another. Bucky’s face, remarkably, remained recognizable even despite the half-torn-off skin and the mangled mess of muscle underneath.</p><p>Maybe it was the ghost of him. Maybe the face was only recognizable in the image that haunted him from moments before.</p><p>“We need to get out of here. Now,” Steve said, his words quiet but sharp. Only then did he  look down at Tony. His jaw was tight, expression inscrutable; there was something to his gaze Tony hadn’t seen before, not even in their darkest moments. “Before anyone else gets hurt.”</p><p>Tony glanced back at the broken fragments of the creature, nodding once in agreement.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He couldn’t be certain how quickly or slowly the walk had gone that time. Steve pulled him out of the control room, led him gently down the stairs, and the rest was a blur of halls and body parts littering the floors of the mansion as they walked. Tony tried to step around them, tried not to disturb anything, but Steve was moving quickly and he wasn’t in the position to be lagging behind. Every <i>crunch</i> of bone under his heel forced acid up the back of his throat, his extremities cold and buzzing and his torso hollow as it had ever been.</p><p>He hadn’t realized that he and Steve had stopped moving, not until he heard the sharp <i>clang! clang! clang!</i> of Steve’s shield against the metal plates covering the mansion’s main doors. It was aggressive; Steve was brutal in his blows, and though the plating was meant to withstand his strength, he seemed to have surpassed his recorded limits in his moment of desperation. The flashlight was on the ground, pointing in the direction of the doors. It wasn’t a flawless set-up, but Tony vaguely recalled trying to hold it himself and being unable to keep it where Steve needed it, too willing to abandon him in favor of checking down the corridors.</p><p>Tony stood aside uselessly.</p><p>It was loud.</p><p>He felt as if Steve was only leading the creatures toward them.</p><p>Anxiously, he switched his phone flashlight back on, stepping away from Steve to peek down the halls once more. He checked every one, going so far as to look up the staircase to the second floor despite knowing his light was too weak to reveal anything.</p><p>“Just meet me at the fireplace, Tony,” came Steve’s voice from behind him, strained.</p><p>Tony opened his mouth to protest, but Steve spoke again before he could.</p><p>“I’ll be there in a minute. You know what to do.”</p><p>He did.</p><p>He heard Steve’s voice again, muffled, directed toward someone else as he walked away. <i>Get to the foyer,</i> he heard. <i>Getting out of here now,</i> he heard.</p><p>There was more, though not meant for him. He allowed the noise to fade into the background. He knew what to do.</p><p>He made it to the living room, again lacking any solid memories of the path he’d taken to get there. He stopped in front of the fireplace, his stare blank as he took in the sight of it. There was kindling gathered at the bottom of the thing already. The damper had been opened already.</p><p>The match in his hand was lit already.</p><p>
  <i>You know what to do.</i>
</p><p>He tossed the match into the kindling and watched as the warm orange glow built up. There was a neat pile of split logs at his feet and, after a minute or so, he began to feed them into the fire. He watched as it grew, breaths coming in slow and deep, his head clear and his body light for the first time in what felt like months.</p><p>
  <i>You know what to do.</i>
</p><p>He reached into the fire, taking one of the logs and pulling it out with some effort. His body tried to rear back, made every effort to protect him from the heat spreading underneath his skin, but he persisted.</p><p>He dropped the log on the carpet just feet away from the fireplace. He watched as it burned, as the glow spread from the carpet to the table to the couch to the paintings on the walls.</p><p>Only then was he aware of the yelling from the halls, a cacophonous trio of voices all screaming his name.</p><p>“<i>Shit!</i>” came Steve’s voice from somewhere nearby, high and desperate. Tony felt Steve’s hand on his arm, pulling him jerkily toward the exit. Tony didn’t move.</p><p>That didn’t matter.</p><p>Steve’s arm hooked under his knees, and he was hoisted into Steve’s grasp. He turned his head, eyes stuck on the carnage.</p><p>It was funny; it didn’t look so much like fire. Red and orange twirled around each other in a delicate dance, almost like ribbons. Nothing seemed to be burning up. Instead, it looked as if the structures keeping the mansion in place were rotting quickly of their own accord, the beams and banisters violently pulled downward by some invisible force. The whole building seemed to be imploding, the vents wheezing in despair.</p><p>The fire alarms rang out through the building, sprinklers in the ceilings trying and failing to douse the flames. Tony barely heard Steve’s panicked, distraught breaths. He felt the rapid beating of Steve’s heart, though, and managed to look away from the fire long enough to take in the sight of Steve’s expression.</p><p><i>You know what to do,</i> Steve had told him.</p><p>Why was it, then, that Steve seemed so surprised? So agonized?</p><p>“Clint, hurry, <i>hurry</i>,” Jan’s voice cried.</p><p>“<i>I can’t fucking see</i>,” Clint yelled back, voice caught halfway between a shout and a sob. “Wasp— Wasp up, c’mon, you can pull—”</p><p>“I can’t. I <i>can’t</i>, the smoke is <i>too much</i>.”</p><p>“Go!” Steve shouted. “Follow our voices, just go!” </p><p>The fire was quicker than they were. Steve barely had the time to set Tony down and pick the shield back up, hammering at the little dent he’d made in the metal again and again and again until a ray of light shone through. Jan saw the crack in between the panels and finally, <i>finally</i> shrunk down. She fluttered through the crack after one hit of the shield and before the next. The sound of sirens filtered in much like the light; the banging of Steve’s shield and Jan’s rough, raw cries for help only made everything louder, more overwhelming. Tony found himself slipping further and further away from reality, vision blurring once again. The throbbing in his head returned.</p><p>Steve’s hands wrapped around the parts of the metal paneling he could reach, pulling back harshly. It bent to his will, and the last thing Tony saw before the blinding light of day was Clint’s body collapsing in front of him.</p><p>His ears rang. Distantly, he was aware of being touched again, being scooped up again. He was placed down somewhere softer and more solid, voices, both familiar and unfamiliar, swirling around him. He curled up on his side, watching from afar as Steve ran back into the building, only to come out moments later with Clint’s body over his shoulder.</p><p>Clint was loaded onto a gurney, wheeled away and out of Tony’s line of sight. Steve and Jan came to stand beside Tony, wherever he was; neither of them spoke for…. however long. Tony was in no place to judge.</p><p>Eventually, though, they were murmuring to each other, Jan tucking herself against Steve’s side as quiet sobs escaped her.</p><p>“— didn’t think it would get this far,” Tony heard Steve say. “I’m sorry. God, Tony. Jan. I’m so sorry.”</p><p><i>It’s alright,</i> Tony wanted to say.</p><p>He didn’t. He couldn’t.</p><p>Hands grasped at him from behind, hands that were only supposed to exist within the confines of the mansion’s walls. They were long, slender, broken, rotting, covering his body and dragging him away from Steve and Jan.</p><p>He reached out desperately, his breaths quick and shallow as he tugged at the edge of Steve’s shirt. He might have been begging. He might have been screaming Steve’s name, sobbing, grabbing for more of the fabric within reach.</p><p>The hands grasped at him from head to toe, far too many in number and far too disjointed. He watched Steve through the slits in between decaying fingers, tried to blink past the liquid dripping into his eyes and tried to blink past the digits in his mouth, invading his throat and tearing their way through the soft skin.</p><p>He watched as Steve took a step back, out of Tony’s reach.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he heard Steve say again. “You’ll be alright. You’ll be okay, Tony, I’m so sorry. They’re here to help. You’ll get the help you need.”</p><p>Tony sobbed, perhaps screamed, the sound so raw and shrill that it nearly split the whole of his head in two.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He was going to go back for the body.</p><p>That was the plan he’d decided on the second he saw it, its entrails a suggestive line toward the rest of the missing pieces like a clue in a sick game. </p><p>He’d get Tony out. He’d make sure Jan and Clint were safe.</p><p>And then he would go back inside, and he’d gather the broken pieces of Bucky like he wished he could have before. He’d call Nat, he’d apologize, and he’d go with her to pick out a nice casket. He’d go home and pour a glass of Bucky’s favorite bourbon. He wouldn’t sleep, not for a long while.</p><p>He’d call the hospital in the morning. He’d check on Tony like he knew Tony deserved, he’d ask for Tony to be put on the phone, he’d talk Tony through— through everything, anything Tony wanted, or he’d serve as distraction from whatever it was Tony was being put through in his recovery. He’d make up for the help he didn’t give, the help he didn’t know Tony needed to begin with. He’d hang up feeling worse, feeling hollow.</p><p>He’d visit Jan. They wouldn’t talk about what happened. They’d go out for brunch. She’d paint his nails and he’d let her. He’d wear the coats she bought for him and he’d touch her more, hug her more, rest his hand on her arm more; he wasn’t sure she had anyone else in her life at the time to offer that to her. He’d check in on Clint just the same. Maybe they could have gone to the movies together. </p><p>That was the plan.</p><p>He wasn’t sure what the plan was anymore, as lost as he’d been when he’d woken up in the morning. He wasn’t sure there was a plan.</p><p>He watched as Tony was gently pulled toward the ambulance, struggling against the grasps of the EMTs as they tried to shush and reassure him. He watched as Tony reached for him, the skin of his hands burned and blistered and oozing. He wondered what the hell must have been going on inside Tony’s head.</p><p>Did he feel betrayed? Abandoned?</p><p>Would he even answer the phone, if Steve were to ask for him?</p><p>His eyes met Tony’s as the EMTs struggled to subdue him long enough to inject him with some sedative or another. There was a dull sort of glassiness to Tony’s gaze, his lips parted just so as his head began to bob uncertainly. His lids finally fell over his eyes, his body going limp.</p><p>The ambulance doors closed.</p><p>Steve turned away.</p><p>He saw the signs, didn’t he? All of them did. Tony had been deteriorating for months, in and out of hospitals, psychiatrists, therapists… They thought he’d be alright. Steve always thought he was the kind of man who spoke of struggle in retrospect, too busy clawing himself out of the thick of it as it was happening to find much use in venting. So, Steve tried to stay normal, tried to stay supportive; he spent time with Tony like he always did, checked in every so often, and… let Tony get help.</p><p>He was good at that. Tony was good at finding help. Steve figured he thought— Well, he figured it was a poor excuse not to concern himself with it, looking back. They’d always butted heads to some degree when it came to Tony’s health. Tony needed time, he <i>always</i> needed time. With the drinking, with his head, with his pain. Steve had tried in the past to get more involved, and it never turned out better than it did when he remained a friend, letting Tony figure out the moving pieces of his recovery on his own.</p><p>Mistakenly, he assumed that would be the case this time. He nodded along to Tony’s delusions, letting the small ones slide, always letting things slide, like— like it didn’t matter how connected Tony was to the world because he’d figure it out eventually, wouldn’t he? He thought it was for the best. He thought it would run its course.</p><p>Maybe it had. Maybe it was on its way, and the lockdown was just… just strange enough, just unexpected enough for everything to come crashing down on Tony again. Steve didn’t know. He couldn’t know.</p><p>He couldn’t make heads or tails of the day’s events, not really. Even then, he wasn’t sure what had tripped the alarms to begin with. A doubtful, nervous voice in his head told him there was no threat, told him that Tony must have done something, must have locked it down himself.</p><p>But he didn’t even let himself touch the suits. He didn’t even let himself access the labs.</p><p>How could he have done this?</p><p>It was too close to the blame game for Steve to dwell for long. The thought of pinning it all on Tony was more sickening the more he thought about it, and the traitorous part of him that wanted to keep it to the side as a <i>possibility</i>, at least, had only been showing up uninvited.</p><p>It wasn’t Tony’s fault.</p><p>Bucky wasn’t expected to be home. Anyone could have had an altercation with him. Part of Steve wondered if Bucky was the intruder Clint had seen in the shadows. And what would Steve have done if Clint were the one to kill him? How much blame would he have placed on Clint’s shoulders, knowing full well that no one wanted this? And Tony was just a little less well, a little more paranoid.</p><p>Steve just didn’t know what he could have done to prevent any of it. He knew there was something. There had to have been something, some step he missed, some bit of effort he hadn’t devoted to fixing this before it started.</p><p>Fixing it before it started.</p><p>Ironic, he thought sardonically, that Tony’s overstepping futurism made the most sense in retrospect.</p><p>It wasn’t news. It wasn’t like he hadn’t come to that realization before. Still, though, he felt as if bitterly mocking himself was apropos, given the circumstances. It felt better. It was almost a release to think of it that way, that Tony’s preventative mindset was the only thing capable of saving him.</p><p>It allowed him to take on the blame as much as it allowed him to step away from it.</p><p><i>If I were a better man</i>, Steve could say, <i>maybe we wouldn’t be here.</i></p><p>Better, of course, meaning more Tony-like. But that was never how it went, was it? He’d take Tony’s place and Tony would take his; they were at their best in their middle grounds, meeting each other in the center, playing off each other.</p><p>When one of them fell apart and the other failed to compensate, they collapsed. Historically, <i>everything,</i> collapsed.</p><p>The mansion sure knew that well.</p><p>Steve couldn’t dwell anymore. He would, again. Soon. When he got back to the apartment he rarely slept in or stopped by the public gym he hadn’t visited in ages, he’d drown himself in it. He’d channel the release into the punching bags and bleed his knuckles dry.</p><p>But not then. He couldn’t, then.</p><p>He needed a minute, just one, to breathe without worrying about what was beyond his control.</p><p>Jan pressed close to him. He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her in tight as she pressed her head against his chest. She’d been sobbing a little bit ago. Steve wasn’t sure when she’d stopped.</p><p>“Think he’ll be alright?” she asked, numbly reaching for Steve’s hand. He let her take it, grateful for the distracting sensation of her fingers idly tracing over and around his knuckles, his fingers, his palm.</p><p>“He’ll get the help he needs this time,” Steve answered on autopilot, the delivery almost mission-like. He didn’t know. He couldn’t bear to wonder.</p><p>“And Clint?”</p><p>“They said he’d make it. He wasn’t in there for long. Not much longer than you, actually.”</p><p>Jan nodded. After a moment’s hesitation, she added, “And you?”</p><p>He didn’t know that, either. He’d be alright, wouldn’t he? What was there, really, that had shaken him to the point of no return? There had been no deaths, no wars, no crises that pushed him past the point where he could imagine himself laughing again someday, even if the imagery didn’t quite reach him in the moment. Right? He’d had his moments of pain so intense that the day-by-day was felt in agonized seconds, both too fast and too slow. He’d had his moments of carelessness, of jerking the handles of his bike hard on bridges and wondering how it might feel to fall.</p><p>But he wasn’t broken, was he? And that meant he was alright, didn’t it? </p><p>“Keep on keepin’ on,” he answered. “I’ll be fine. Always am.”</p><p>“You keep saying that, and it keeps feeling like maybe you don’t get the question.” Jan’s voice was a murmur against his chest, half worried and half teasing. There was a dullness to it that came with the exhaustion, but the sentiment was understood.</p><p>He pulled her in closer, resting his chin almost protectively atop her head. She snuggled into the hold, her eyes slipping shut as she sighed.</p><p>A phone rang.</p><p>It was an older kind of ring tone (though still modern by Steve’s standards), a high sort of trill Steve somehow felt he hadn’t heard in quite some time.</p><p>He pulled away from Jan enough to scan the area for the source of the noise. Tony’s phone lay in the gravel just outside of the mansion’s main doorway.</p><p>AVENGERS MANSION, the caller ID read. The number underneath matched that of the landline.</p><p>Steve paused. Stared.<br/>
Picked up the phone.</p><p>“Steve?” came Tony’s voice from the other end. It had a clarity to it that it hadn’t had in months, the sound an odd twisting of relief and unease in his gut. “I’m inside. I just— I just woke up. Where did everyone go?”</p><p>Steve’s grip on the phone was oddly loose, oddly relaxed.</p><p>“Who is it?” Jan asked.</p><p>Steve ended the call, his gaze shifting to the crumpled metal panel behind the open door and the charred wreckage it invited him into. He pocketed the phone.</p><p>“Steve?” came Tony’s voice again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Some gentle little content warnings here, because I'm awful at tagging:<br/>- some grotesque-ish descriptions... there is a mangled dead person<br/>- housefire<br/>- panic attacks with breathing trouble/disorientation/sensory processing issues<br/>- "ambiguous ending" referring both to the hopeful-hopeless/happy-sad spectrum and also just what the fuck is going on in general<br/>- allusions to arm injuries/cuts</p><p> </p><p>Hope you enjoyed it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>